It’s just a different vibe

The weather change, the upsurge in traffic, the last minute shopping trips.

After a season of uncertainty (which arguably persists), the world is up to celebrating the beautiful reminder of God’s greatest gift to us…Christmas

On a planet with varied circumstances, different people are experiencing Christmas differently. Some have had a difficult year; some are swimming upstream against negative tides and others are weary from fighting losing battles.

Our heavenly Father knew all about our imperfect lives long before He set this season in place. Like the messiness that characterized our Saviour’s birth, God finds us in the messy places and graces us with blessings that we cannot even begin to imagine.

That’s hope right there, no matter how great or how hard your year has been.

In all honesty, we sometimes face problems that can’t always be solved. Life can take us through storms that leave us battered and sometimes we can’t see the forest for the trees. A season like Christmas stops our world and lets us know that God gave the final answer to the world’s ultimate problem.

Before the first Christmas, God had given a human example that foreshadowed what He was going to do by letting Jesus enter our world.

 A couple of millennia before Gabriel went to Mary, Abraham was walking up a hill ready to lay down everything he had ever wanted in an act of obedience. After an entire lifetime waiting for Isaac, he was getting ready to lay down his beloved son in response to God’s instruction.

As if that wasn’t surprising enough, when Isaac found out what his father had planned, he didn’t resist. As it turns out, God made a last minute substitute and father and son were spared what would have been a gruesome chapter in the scriptures.

God however did not spare himself that agony…and that is God the Father and God the son.

Today, we celebrate – and we should- the fact that the moment Jesus got into the womb of a teenage Mary, we were safe.

In spite of how life goes, once we accept the free gift of God the Son, we get to win no matter what.

Maybe that’s a message you need to hear.

It is for me.

When the final tally comes in, we get to win.

That’s a reason to hang on.

By all means live it up when you can. The one who gave us His Son loves a good celebration. (Think angelic choir appearing to the shepherds)

God’s heart is delighted when our faith in the gift of Jesus causes us to rejoice.

It’s time to let go of the lost battles.

It’s time to turn the page on the hard season you may have had, and trust the God who authored Christmas to make sense of your journey. 

He inserted Jesus and changed the trajectory of humanity.

He’s not out of his depth with you.

Merry Christmas!